Behind

by Nicole Trope

  ‘I’ve never been overseas before,’ she said with a grin. ‘It’s all so completely amazing.’

  It had been a wonderful holiday but when they returned and moved in with his parents he had seen, had almost felt, Rachel shrinking back into herself. Her voice grew softer and he noticed a slight rounding to her shoulders. His parents were easy enough to get along with despite being set in their ways but Rachel was terrified of offending them, of getting something wrong – as though she were a child instead of an adult. ‘I don’t mind if you want to,’ she had said to him when he suggested moving in with them for six months as they waited for more houses to be built around them, and he had known that it was not something she wanted to do. So, they had moved into the mostly empty suburb where at least roads were paved and the park was completed.

  Rachel seemed fine this morning, but he could tell there was something. Maybe the fear of the night before had lingered, just like it had for him, despite the efficient constables checking the house thoroughly. He hates to think of his wife being scared or worried about being alone in the house that is meant to be their dream home. It took such a long time to save for the deposit, so many years in the small, cramped flat where he couldn’t take a step without tripping over baby toys or full baskets of laundry waiting to be put away.

  He prefers things to be tidy and orderly and he guesses he has grown up to be like his father, but Rachel seems cut from a different cloth. She never seems bothered by mess. When they first started living together, he had grown frustrated with the chaos in the kitchen one night and said, ‘Why can’t you just clean up as you go? Why does everything have to be in such a mess all the time?’

  Her reaction shocked him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said as she began putting things away. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she repeated and he could see her visibly trembling.

  ‘Hey, it’s okay,’ he found himself saying, ‘it’s fine, don’t worry.’ He knew there was a story there, something she was holding onto, but she never wanted to discuss it.

  They moved into the house two weeks ago and it still looks like it did the day they arrived. He is finding it frustrating to never be able to find anything but he knows that she is doing the best she can. Her mother is nearing the end and he can see it is tearing her apart. He will do a whole lot of unpacking on the weekend, take some of the burden off her. He feels better after making this decision. There are a lot of things he can’t control right now but the physical unpacking of their books and even some unopened wedding presents that have been waiting for a big enough house is something he can manage.

  He can see, can feel – and has since the day he met her – that there is something fragile abut Rachel, something delicate. Lou set it up, of course, because Lou can never stop herself from interfering. ‘She’s just gorgeous,’ his twin sister told him after she’d known Rachel for a couple of weeks. ‘She’s a little quiet and a bit shy but so pretty that all the boys in the class keep staring. I’m telling you, she’s amazing. Stop by the coffee shop near the quadrangle at eleven tomorrow. When you see her, you’ll want to date her – and she’s clever and sweet. What more could you want?’

  Lou had been right, she always was. He had stood at the door to the coffee shop, his hands in his pockets as people moved around him, just staring at the young woman sitting at the table with his sister. Her fine wavy brown hair hung down her back and her delicate hands flew through the air as she spoke. She smiled at something Lou said, and then she laughed and covered her mouth with her hand as though embarrassed. He moved forward to introduce himself, wanting to be the person making her smile and laugh.

  Sitting next to her he had tried to be funny as he made sure he kept his hands well away from her, knowing that he wanted to reach out and touch the creamy skin of her arm, knowing that he didn’t want to stop there.

  After their first date he was smitten. There was something about her, something more than just her beauty, a kind of grace in the way she moved and spoke. And there was also the tinge of sadness in her startling green eyes, a shadow that never left. He wanted to know everything about her and it was only as he lay in bed that night, going over their evening, that it occurred to him that he knew virtually nothing about her beyond that she lived with her mother and her father had passed away from cancer when she was seven.

  When he asked his sister about her, they realised that Lou also knew very little about Rachel. When he pressed Rachel on her childhood, wanting her to share her memories with him, wanting to unpeel her layers, she always glossed over it quickly and moved on.

  ‘What was your dad like?’ he asked her.

  ‘Oh, you know. He was just my dad. He was nice to me; I mean of course he was but I don’t remember much. He was tall. I used to think he was a giant when I was about four.’ She stared into the distance. ‘A giant,’ she repeated and then she looked at him. ‘But you know, I was a kid so… I had a big imagination.’

  ‘Was it hard when he got sick?’ he asked, squeezing her hand.

  ‘Harder on my mum than me. She kind of protected me from all that. It was quite quick because it was pancreatic cancer and they didn’t discover it until it was too late for treatment. Mum told me that he decided not to get chemotherapy. When it was near the end, she didn’t let me see him anymore because he looked so bad. I wish I remembered more about him but I don’t really.’

  ‘It must have been hard for her to accept that he didn’t want to get treatment.’

  ‘She understood, at least that’s what she’s said to me – she understood his decision. It was too late and the drugs would only have made things worse.’

  He has seen pictures of her father, a tall man with broad shoulders and a head of thick dark hair. His smile was nice but there was something about him… It was almost as if his smile didn’t quite seem to touch his eyes. Rachel and her mother don’t talk about him much but he supposes that’s because he passed away a long time ago.

  They have been married for nine years now and he still feels that he doesn’t quite know Rachel, that she is holding something back from him. She never argues, refuses to argue. If there is something they disagree on, she will simply retreat, either agreeing with him or walking away. It drives him mad sometimes. He has grown up with his mother and Lou, assertive women who are forever standing up for themselves. If anyone had asked him who was the head of the family, he could only have answered that it was his mother. He can remember the rows his parents had when he was younger, not just about the domestic stuff in their lives but about politics and religion and movies. And Lou likes to make sure that everyone in a room knows her opinion on everything. She is headmistress of a primary school now and has no intention of getting married or having kids of her own – so very different to Rachel. Rachel loves teaching but was happy enough to scale back when her daughter arrived. ‘All I really want is to be a mother and create a happy home,’ she told him.

  He was sure that by now he and Rachel would have had a second child but each year she has put off the idea. Things were difficult when Beth was born. Veronica was diagnosed with cancer for the first time and Beth was a baby who hated sleep and could cry for hours on end. Rachel struggled through it all. Because Veronica was wading through her first rounds of chemotherapy, she wasn’t able to help with the baby very much. His own mother was working full time and he had only been granted a couple of weeks’ leave before he had to return to work.

  When Beth was four months old, he came home from work one day to find his daughter wet and screaming in her cot and Rachel curled up on their bed, staring at the wall.

  He took his tearful daughter from her cot and bathed and changed her and then he took her to her inert mother. ‘Rachel, Beth needs feeding,’ he said and Rachel obediently took Beth from him. Finally, there was silence as Beth latched onto her mother, her little body shuddering as she drank.

  ‘What happened?’ Ben asked.

  ‘She just wouldn’t stop crying,’ Rachel replied, her tone flat. ‘S
he wouldn’t stop crying and I was trying to talk to my mother but then she had to go and throw up and I knew that I should have been with her. My mum has no one with her, Ben, and I’m here with Beth and she just won’t stop crying.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘okay we’re going to sort this out.’

  Even though they couldn’t afford it, Ben reasoned that using some of their savings to hire a babysitter a few days a week was well worth it. A lovely girl named Patricia was with them for six months so that Rachel could leave Beth and spend some time with her mother.

  Their daughter was sleeping through the night by then and Veronica’s prognosis was good, her cancer chased into remission, and suddenly life simply settled. From then on Rachel adored being with Beth, singing to her and talking to her and playing with her all day long.

  But those first few difficult months left their mark and he knew that Rachel was scared of having another child. He had assumed she was finally ready when they had been choosing stuff for the house. She had deliberately picked neutral colours for the third bedroom, saying, ‘I think it might be time for a brother or sister for Beth.’ But then Veronica’s cancer returned. He cannot forget Rachel’s face after the phone call from her mother. Veronica had gone alone to her regular six-month check-up because Rachel had to work. They had all assumed that everything would be fine, just as it had been for five years, but it wasn’t fine. Veronica phoned around dinner time and Ben is sure that she called when she knew he would be home, knowing just how devastated her daughter would be.

  ‘Oh no, oh no, Mum… no… no… no,’ Rachel had moaned and he had felt goosebumps along his arms. He knew it couldn’t be good news. He took Beth into the living room and put on a favourite DVD for her, knowing that his wife would need him.

  ‘I should have been there,’ she kept repeating as she sobbed in his arms. ‘She had to get the news all alone.’

  Veronica had gone back to war with her cancer but this time it would not be vanquished. Now there is no more hope of her recovering, and any thoughts about a new baby have disappeared from Rachel’s mind.

  He is not sure how Rachel will cope with her mother’s death. She doesn’t seem to be coping now. Did she actually hear someone in the house or was it just a nightmare brought on by the stress she is under?

  He shakes his head. Anyone could make the mistake of assuming that a noise they heard was someone breaking in. He’s sure the police are called out all the time only to find nothing.

  Turning into the parking lot of his building, he tears his thoughts away from Rachel to go over the list of things he has to do today. He pulls into his parking space, remembering the first time he did this four years ago, remembering the small spark of pride he felt seeing his name on the wall in front of the space, the bright yellow paint still wet to the touch. He had been excited about coming to work in the fancy large new building, designed to capture the attention of the whole city. The building, with its slight curve and floor-to-ceiling windows, had won the architect an award, and the space made Ben feel like he was walking on air when he stood right up against the glass. He thought he had finally made it. He thought he would see out his career working for Colin, becoming his right-hand man and eventually running the whole business. Everything feels very different now.

  As he wearily gets out of the car, he leans down to get his briefcase on the floor of the passenger seat and his hand grazes something there. He twists his body and leans down to pick it up. It’s a tiny doll, not one he’s ever seen before. It’s made of plastic and has pink hair that sticks straight up and an ugly little face. ‘A troll doll,’ he murmurs. He thinks there may have been a movie made about them a few years ago. Rachel must have taken Beth to see it. He’s sure Lou used to collect these. The little doll is incongruously wearing a pink tutu and it’s very grubby. He slips it into his briefcase. Beth is probably attached to the thing if she’s been carrying it around.

  He makes his way across the parking garage. The structure, designed to be light and airy in the summer, somehow turns into an underground wind tunnel in winter, and he shivers as the cold air whistles through the space.

  He gets into the lift, relieved at the heating, and presses the button for the sixteenth floor when he sees a man hurrying towards him. He holds his hand against the door and waits. The man steps inside, slightly puffed from moving quickly, and nods his head at Ben in thanks. He’s a big man, taller than him by a whole head, and Ben instinctively moves ever so slightly away.

  ‘Cold out there,’ Ben says.

  ‘Yep,’ says the man, and then the lift doors open and he gets out on the third floor.

  When the doors close, he is alone again. ‘Well, good morning to you too,’ he mutters to himself. He’s never seen the guy before but that means nothing. Hundreds of people work in this building.

  He wonders for how much longer he will be one of those people.

  7

  Little Bird

  After school Andy’s mum gives me a lift home even though I can walk. ‘Your mum asked me to drop you off. She’s not feeling well today,’ she says.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Do you know what’s wrong with her?’

  ‘Her head hurts,’ I say because that’s what I’m supposed to say. I’m glad I didn’t have to walk home alone. The dog at number fifteen has sharp teeth and he was angry, angry that I walked past him, and he growled and barked and then I had to run because I knew he was going to jump over the fence and eat me all up. Mummy knows about the dog and that’s why she asked Andy’s mum to drop me home, but I know she will tell me it’s ‘our little secret’. Mummy and I have lots of ‘our little secrets’.

  So, when Daddy asks me if I walked home, I will say, ‘Tweet, tweet.’ And he will smile because he will think that means yes but sometimes I say ‘tweet, tweet’ so I don’t have to tell a lie. I don’t like lying to Daddy but I like that Mummy and I have our little secrets.

  If Mummy’s head is sore, she has an afternoon nap and that’s our little secret.

  If I don’t get ten out of ten on my spelling test, Mummy just puts it in the bin and says, ‘You’ll do better next time.’ That’s our little secret.

  If I have a bath and spill water on the floor, Mummy helps me clean it up before Daddy does his inspection, and even though she’s not supposed to help me, that’s our little secret.

  Andy’s mum nods when I tell her that Mummy has a sore head, like she understands about sore heads, but I don’t know if she’s ever really had one. She is always happy and her face is always just one colour and on hot days like today she wears shorts and I can see that her legs are all golden and smooth. She doesn’t have any hurting flowers on her face or her body so I don’t think she knows about sore heads at all.

  Mummy never wears shorts, only long skirts because Daddy likes her to look pretty.

  Andy talks and talks and talks, telling his mum about how he climbed to the top of the climbing frame and how he got full marks on the spelling test. I also got ten out of ten but I don’t say anything. I’m worried about the big flower on Mummy’s cheek. One time her head got so sore that she couldn’t wake up from her afternoon nap so it couldn’t be our little secret, and when Daddy came home, he said, ‘Mummy’s feeling a bit lazy so I’ll have to cook tonight.’

  I don’t like the food he cooks but I have to eat it or he gets mad and says I’m not allowed to leave the table. He thinks food is about ‘fuelling your body only’. But I’m not a car and I like things that are tasty. Daddy makes chicken with the skin off and broccoli that’s still raw and crunchy and green-tasting and other stuff I don’t like to eat. One night, after he made pink fish and Brussels sprouts, Daddy got cross that I wouldn’t eat and told me to stay at the table until my plate was clean, clean, clean. I sat there so long that I fell asleep. In the morning Mummy found me there and she hid the food away in a packet to throw out in Mrs Jackson’s garbage bin. Daddy smiled and smiled when he saw my empty plate and Mummy said, ‘Looks like she got hung
ry after all… You were right, Len.’

  ‘I told you – all that’s needed is some consistent discipline.’ Those are Daddy’s favourite words, ‘consistent’ and ‘discipline’. He says them nearly every day.

  Mummy throwing away Daddy’s yucky food is also our little secret. We don’t just keep our little secrets from Daddy, we keep them from Kevin as well because he’s meany-mean. Mummy says I shouldn’t say that because he’s not really mean. ‘He’s just trying to find his place in the world,’ or she says, ‘One day you’ll be a teenager too,’ or, ‘Try to just stay out of his way,’ or, ‘He was such a good baby and such a sweet, kind little boy but…’

  Sometimes Mummy lets me look through all the old photo albums and she has one with lots of pictures of her and Kevin from when he was a baby. In the photos he is always smiling and Mummy is too, and in lots of them they are hugging each other. Kevin doesn’t like to hug Mummy anymore but she says that’s because he’s ‘just a teenager’. I don’t want to be ‘just a teenager’ because I always want to hug Mummy.

  I don’t remember when Kevin was sweet and kind. I only remember him when he was mostly mean and just a tiny bit kind.

  I try to stay out of his way every day, but I get into his way anyway. If I’m watching television, he comes and sits right next to me and says, ‘My turn now,’ and then he takes the control from me and changes the channel. If I’m in the bathroom, he bangs on the door, making noise all over the house even though Daddy hates noise, and he shouts, ‘My turn now.’ It’s always Kevin’s turn now.

  The only time it’s not Kevin’s turn now is when Daddy is home because then it is always Daddy’s turn. Kevin doesn’t take the control from him and he doesn’t bang on the door when Daddy is home. But he’s still mean to me. ‘Get out of my way,’ he whisper-snarls like the big growly dog. He doesn’t like Daddy to hear him because then Daddy takes his big hand and slaps Kevin’s ear, making it go all red. He doesn’t tell Kevin to be nice to me – he just slaps him and walks away and then Kevin looks at me like he wants to bite me into pieces.